


Grey Rhythm Rainfall

by chromus



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bad Charles, Early Work, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Erik, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:15:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1786885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromus/pseuds/chromus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles goes missing.</p><p>Erik finds him.</p><p>Charles isn't himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two years later, I decided to come back and make a few edits.

Erik found him at the lake nearby.

Charles had been sitting under a tree in the dark, staring out at apparently nothing. His still pose consisted of his hands resting loosing on either side of himself, with his left leg folded flat against the ground, and his right leg arched over it. It seemed as though he'd been there for hours, relaxed in the same pose.

"Charles," Erik called for him. What began as an attempt to mask worry with calmness quickly eroded into full-blown concern. "What are you doing all the way out here? Everyone's been looking all over for you." It wasn't quite a shout, but it was loud enough to make Charles turn his head slightly to look his way as he approached.

Charles said nothing, but offered him an expression of curiosity, head slightly tilted to lean up against the tree.

"Charles, what's wrong?" He carefully omitted the _with you_. Erik spoke softer this time, shaking his head. "Why'd you run off like that?"

No answer still.

Sigh of agitation. Followed by a flurry of words "Hank told me you were only going for a brief walk, but you didn't return for hours. He tried looking for you outside the mansion, and he couldn't find you anywhere. Do you have any idea? He was absolutely frantic when he called me." He paused to inhale something that was either a deep breath or sigh of relief, or some desperate combination of the two.

Erik had only been able to find Charles by focusing on the movement of iron in his blood, since he no longer had his wheelchair. Examining Charles, he found little to no other metal on his person, as suspected. Small bits of round metal on his shirt, probably buttons. A strip of metal at the front of his jeans, probably the zipper. And a round piece of metal in his pocket, probably a replacement button. The fact that he'd been sitting stationary with small bits of metal did not help at all. The metal from the trash and litter was nearly indistinguishable from the metal on Charles.

Erik noticed Charles looking behind himself, towards the opposite direction of Erik's voice. He frowned when he saw that he was looking at nothing in particular.

"I'm waiting for someone." Charles replied calmly, looking back at him. There was little to no expression in his voice. After an odd second or two, he smiled. It was like he intended to smile earlier but forgot.

Erik sighed and sat down beside him. Christ, he hadn't even dressed properly for the weather, and whoever he was waiting for. Erik unwrapped his cloak and wrapped it around Charles.

"Who are you waiting for, Charles?"

"I don't know." Charles offered helpfully.

Erik frowned. This could be a bad sign.

"Are you...waiting for me?"

They had spent afternoons at this lake before, when they would just sit and have philosophical conversations, that somehow amounted to nothing but the pleasant feeling of company and satisfying intellectual debate. Charles would begin and lead in by bringing up some utterly mundane thought, but profound and so very  _Charles_. Erik waited for next thought, hoping that it was mundane enough -- simplistically _Charles_ enough to be just that. He waited for something that could absolve him of the suspicion that something actually was wrong. Something to assure him that things were still normal. That things were still okay.

"I don't know." Charles eerily repeated his last response exactly to the point.

It didn't help. This was just plain unsettling. Erik felt a different kind of chill now. The kind that crawls up your spine and makes you so very aware of the darkness around you. He didn't know what to do except grip Charles' shoulder and pull him closer, collapsing his arched leg.

Charles didn't look at him. But if he did, he would see the kind of deep concern in Erik's eyes that usually made Charles fluster and want to apologize, even when it didn't make sense to.

"Are you waiting for someone too?"

The innocent, _expressionless_ phrase sent mechanical fear crawling through his body. Erik almost wanted to cry, because crying would be easier than the paradoxical confusion he experienced having to deal with this. What did Charles do?

 _Waiting for the Charles I know to come back to me,_  he wanted to say. But instead, he shook his head.

"I see."

Moments of silence passed. Charles didn't try to move. He was disturbingly docile.

"Would you like to go home, Charles?" Erik's voice apparently took a moment to register in his ears. There was another pause.

"I'm not allowed to leave yet. But when I'm done waiting," He paused strangely, as though struggling to pronounce words suppressed by a mental white-out. "I'd like to leave this place. I suspect that it's cold. Even though I can't feel it any more, I don't think it'd be very good for me to stay here longer than I need to." Another pause. But it was a different kind of pause. "I don't know if I have a home."

His tone was eerie, yet so innocent. And there were so many things wrong with that answer.

Erik ran his fingers through his own hair in frustration.

"Why aren't you allowed to leave, Charles?"

"I'm waiting for someone." An exact repeat of his first response.

"Who are you waiting for?" Erik asked before he could stop himself.

"I don't know." An exact repeat of his second response.

Erik's frown deepened.

"Let's try something else," Erik spoke slowly. "Let's say that whoever you're waiting for shows up. What are you planning on doing once that person gets here?"

Charles reached into his pocket and pulled out a slightly crumpled envelope.

"I have to give them this letter."

Erik stared at the sealed envelope.  _To Erik Lehnsherr_. It was written Charles' neat handwriting.

"I think it's for you," The white-out pause returned. His expression told him that there were one or two words he wanted to say instead of pausing, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it came. Charles handed him the envelope. "Something tells me."

Erik stared at Charles carefully, and took the envelope from him as he got up.

"When you're done with that. I can finally leave," White-out pause. When he closed his lips, he smiled and turned around, looking towards the water with his hands in his pockets.

"I'll take you back once I read this." He tore the short edge of the envelope and pulled out the paper that was resting inside.

"I'm afraid that won't be necessary." White-out pause.

Erik looked back down at the folded letter. He unraveled it and there was a single word.

_Sorry._

He froze.

Erik looked up, and saw that Charles had pulled out a plastic gun, and that in the time it took to read the letter, he had somehow managed to load it with a single, metal bullet. And his voice returned to a prerecorded normal sound.

"Goodbye,  _my friend_." No pause.

The gun fired.


	2. Chapter 2

At the silence-splitting sound, Erik could feel the bullet tap Charles in the temple.

The metal bullet that should have just been a button or a cuff link.

For a heart-stopping moment, time seemed to stand still.

It seemed that in a short moment, the worst fear he never considered became reality. Erik flattened the frontal end of the bullet into a round, disk-like shape in an attempt to stop the bullet that was already forcing its way into his skull. Time was not in his jurisdiction, but overwhelming the surrounding area with his will, all that was metal would oblige Erik in his desperation.

A memory flashed before him, echoing, as the distorted object made its way, still cutting warming into-

_If you know you can deflect it, then you're not challenging yourself._

No. No no no. He didn't want to think about what the bullet was doing, only that he wanted it out, and far away.

_Charles._

"CHARLES."

A feeling rose up from inside him, blooming into all sorts of uncertainty, anger, and sadness.

Charles tried pulling the trigger again, uselessly and repeatedly, somehow unaware that there was nothing left. Had there been any more, Erik would have flung them far into a distant tree. His odd state of animation was in part relieving (since he wasn't dead), but in majority it was upsetting. Erik slapped the plastic gun out of his hand, emotionally charged with a miniature storm system, and tinged with all sorts of horrified.

Charles didn't seem to understand, looking confusedly at his now-empty hand, and then at Erik. As Charles turned his head, Erik released the handwritten distraction (which, during his focus, balled-up into a heated smudge of ink and paper), and slowly raised a shaking hand to survey the damage.

_Damp._

He was bleeding. Charles was bleeding. But the wound wasn't deep. Erik framed the lost telepath's face with both hands, still deeply disturbed by his face. He was wearing such a stilled expression. Full of neutral and emotionless curiosity that twisted Erik's stomach. This can't be Charles.

Examining the wound closer, there were cold red marks that were barely distinguishable from his hair in the darkness before the disk-bullet had dropped dead to the ground.

He swallowed. With the back of his hand, he wiped away Charles' blood, and retracted it slowly.

Charles eyed retracting Erik's hand, and reached out to hold it almost tentatively with unsettling curiosity, but then pressed it with a sort of assurance as if to say _'Are you alright?'_.

Erik could only look back at his face. Charles looked sad, and his expression told Erik that he felt guilty but didn't know why.

_Are you alright?_

Erik stared. This seemingly-empty Charles could still use his powers.

"Charles," He began slowly. "I'm taking you back, now."

Charles didn't acknowledge it. Erik wanted to curse himself for perhaps going _too_ slow. But he realized that Charles was more interested in the almost-bullet wound, the telepath's finger lightly rubbing the area a few times without wincing. Although Charles was already starting to pull his quickly-bloodying hand back, Erik firmly gripped it in fear that he'd try touching it again.

"Don't touch."

He still wasn't sure if he should be angry with his voice, because evidently Charles would give the same non-response no matter how he sounded. He began tearing a strip of fabric from his shirt, and then a second, because the first wasn't going to be enough. He lightly tied a makeshift bandage over Charles' wound.

 _'Are you alright? '_  Charles' voice telepathically repeated.

 _'That's what I should be asking you.'_   Erik angrily didn't say.

Instead, he tells Charles to hold the makeshift bandage in place, sighing that the fabric wasn't the right kind to be make a good bandage, and hoping that Charles in his current state would be obedient enough to comply. While it wasn't bleeding profusely, he'd need to get him to Hank soon for actual medical attention.

"I'm alright." Charles responded. Notably to the unasked question.

'Mildly upset' rejoined Erik's storm of emotions, but 'relief' did as well when Charles seemed to let Erik finish his ad hoc patch job.

Erik stood up, lifting Charles up, who'd already exhibited an unsettling amount of compliance already. In the corner of his eye, he located the plastic gun, he unhooked his metal watch, hooking it around the plastic gun to bring back as evidence. Success.

Standing up once more, the cold bit at his waist, where the fabric had been torn off. A slowly building-up pitter-patter of dampness began on the hard ground nearby.

They were reminders that Erik needed to get back, and soon.


End file.
